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In the re twenty five and one half seconds Willie walked what seemed to him a mile from his seat to the cashier's desk and at the last instant buhtly in Willie's hand was thirty five cents and his check with a like amount written upon it Amid the crash of crockery which followed the collision Willie slammed check and money upon the cashier's desk and fled Nor did he pause until in the reassuring seclusion of a dark side street There Willie sank upon the curb alternately cold with fear and hot with sha, and into his heart entered the iron of class hatred, searing it to the core
Fortunately for youth it recuperates rapidly from mortal blows, and so it was that another half hour found Willie wandering up and down Broadway but at the far end of the street from The Elite Restaurant A motion picture theater arrested his attention; and presently, parting with one of his two re dimes, he entered The feature of the bill was a detectivein the world could have better suited Willie's psychic needs It recalled his earlier feats of the day, in which he took pardonable pride, and raised hiain to a self-confidence he had not felt since he entered the ever to be hated Elite Restaurant
The show over Willie set forth afoot for hoh; but what lay at the end of the long as infinitely worse, as Willie's father had warned hi, preferably Before he had gone two blocks from the theater Willie had concocted at least three tales to account for his tardiness, either one of which would have done credit to the iard or a Jules Verne; but at the end of the third block he caught a glihts of ho histhe entrance to an alley Old trees grew in the parkway at his side At the street corner a half block away a high flung arc swung gently froht upon the alley'sfroe bulk of a bear Terrified, Willie juht have caught sight or scent of him he poked his head cautiously around the side of the bole just in tiirl conized her at the first glance--she was the very girl he had seen burying the dead man in the Squibbs woods Instantly Willie Case was transfor sleuth At a safe distance he followed the girl and the bear through one alley after another until they came out upon the road which leads south froe and his companions When they turned toward the oldclapboards for any chance reht indicate their future plans He heard theht oron to another location which they had evidently decided upon but no clehich they dropped